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Media Economics

Media Economics
Applying Economics to New and Traditional Media

August 2004 | 368 pages | SAGE Publications, Inc
How does the Internet affect the supply of information-based entertainment and cultural goods? Why do telephone companies have peak and off-peak prices for long-distance calls? Why is broadcasting-but not newspaper publishing-usually regulated and sometimes subsidized? Media Economics: Application of Economics to New and Traditional Media provides a thorough foundation of the microeconomic principles and concepts needed to understand media industries and issues in the converging media environment.


Key Features:

- Chapter opening vignettes introduce the issues analyzed in each chapter

- Concise definitions of key terms for a clear understanding of basic microeconomic and managerial economic concepts

- Examples from media industries in a variety of countries including the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, and Australia

- A concept-driven approach enabling a longer shelf-life as technologies, structures, and revenues change

- A recognition of the reality of convergence and consolidation in media industries rather than addressing each media outlet individually.

Media Economics assumes no prior background in economics and is designed for undergraduate and graduate students studying media economics and media industries. The book is an ideal text for public policy and the media or media and society courses with an economic perspective in Media Studies, Communication, Business, Journalism, Film Studies, Political Studies, and Economics programs.

Introduction and Overview
Demand and Supply
Consumer Behavior
Production and Cost
Revenue, Profit, Risk, and Managerial Decisions
Market Structure, Theory of the Firm, and Industrial Organization
Perfect Competition and Monopoly
Monopolistic Competition and Oligopoly
Pricing and Marketing Segmentation
Labor Markets
Government Intervention
International Trade

"Hoskins, McFadyen and Finn de-dismalise economics. Their book is clearly written, full of cogent and apposite examples and analyses persuasively what makes media and communications like, and unlike, other economic sectors. From network externality to public good, from experience goods to superstars, from dumping to quotas they lucidly guide the reader through the tangles of the new economy and why it now matters less if maids burn books. Eat your heart out Thomas Carlyle."

Richard E. Collins
The Open University, U.K

"This is simply the most comprehensive and rigorous book available on the economics of the media. In a clear and non-technical style, it explains the economic principles and concepts needed to understand media firms, industries and policy, and applies this analysis to contemporary real world examples. It is highly suitable as a text for a course on the economics of media industries, and for executives in media or communications related organisations in the private or public sector."                                                                                      
                                                                                                                                                        -- Allan Brown, Griffith University, Australia

Allan Brown
Griffith University, Australia

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